The Fosse Way

A new season with a new manager but no new signings. Leicester City welcomed the troubled Sheffield Wednesday for a game that had plenty of protests but hope from fan solidarity and for a fresh start.

A tale of two Thai owned clubs also turned into a match of two halves. Pre season hadn’t given Leicester fans a clear cut idea of exactly what starting eleven to expect and with newly appointed club Captain, Ricardo, injured there was also the question of who’d don the armband. James Justin was the chosen leader in a team lacking obvious ones.

Those not left queuing to get in outside, a change largely down to the mass drive to digital tickets, saw new boss Marti Cifuentes go around the stands and clap the fans ahead of kick off. Leicester’s off field issues pale in comparison to Sheffield Wednesday but there was a feeling of excitement and possibility for a fresh start on the pitch. 

Although past memories were haunting us. Cast your memory back to 2016, Leicester City started that season away at Hull. A team who had no permanent manager, an owner the fans vehemently wanted out of their club and a bit of a ramshackle squad due to challenges off the pitch. 

On a day where Jamie Vardy punched himself in the head, such was his frustration at his own performance, Hull pulled off a shock 2-1 win, making the Foxes the first defending champions to lose their season opener, while Hull made no substitutes. How? A pinch of luck but mostly because they wanted it more and got at the Foxes.

Pre-match it was hard not to draw the comparisons with Sheffield Wednesday who deserve much more, not least from the EFL but by Dejphon Chansiri departing the club and letting them rebuild. Having been in the away end that day at Hull, the way Wednesday came out of the blocks at the King Power and bullied us in the early stages, it felt like another surprise might be on the cards.

The away end, who only took their seats five minutes in as part of ongoing protests against Chansiri, had missed the early pressure their team laid onto Leicester. 

Their reason for doing so was worthy, the protest was loud and clear outside and featured flares and a banner flying over the stadium just ahead of kick off. There was a rare heart-warming moment that saw the entire King Power crowd clap the Wednesday fans in, and Union FS holding a ‘Chansiri=poison’ banner in solidarity. 

The away side were deserving of their lead when it came in the first half. Oliver Skipp trying to make a block but helping Nathaniel Chalobah shot in. As another eagle eyed writers spotted, this his first goal since 2021. There was a sense of picking up where we’d left off, defensively naïve and just making poor decisions. 

Rome wasn’t built in a day and it was wishful thinking to hope that Leicester’s multitude of problems could have been fixed in one pre-season. 

Based on Leicester’s significantly improved second half performance, it felt like a combination of Marti Cifuentes addressing some tactics, shape and clearly saying the right things to the players, alongside Wednesday’s tired legs and limited resources worked against them, not forgetting losing Captain, Barry Bannan, who was sent off for a second bookable offense.

Cifuentes has all the passion and says all the right things but today highlights that he’s still got his work cut out and a big heap of working with what he’s got. And hoping some key components aren’t sold in the next three weeks.

Plan Abdul

It wasn’t just the pace at which the away side got going, they looked hungrier for the ball in the opening phases. Leicester players are clearly still settling into what Cifuentes is asking of them. 

The two sides were mismatched for height too. Bannan aside, Wednesday are a tall team. A gap in Leicester’s strengths for years continued a trend of uncomfortable moments from set pieces. 

Leicester struggled to get Bilal El Khannouss onto the ball in the early stages, though he had a screamer of a chance go just wide with one of his first touches. 

The home side found themselves getting back on top of possession but unable to break through and get good service to Jordan Ayew. The successor to Vardy in shirt number, he found himself dropping deeper to connect play.

The first half plan appeared to be to get Abdul Fatawu on the ball and then leave the rest up to him. A fine tactic in some games, he’s exciting enough for this to be a genuine plan but he does need some help. Ideally, he needs other players to be in the box for crosses. 

Part of his success also relies on Stephy Mavididi, and others, providing threat and support on the other wing to split defenders. Mavididi was poor by his own standards, though a run in the second half should have seen him score. 

To his credit, Fatawu persisted and while he couldn’t influence the game as much as he’s capable of, it’s worth remembering that he is still coming back from injury. And as a few of his dribbles and bursts past defenders showed, he is going to cause problems. 

He had his own chances too, contributing to the 27 total shots we had that forced Pierce Charles into action on numerous occasions. Having pulled off thirteen saves, he will rue the two that Leicester scored, mostly caused by his side switching off or running out of energy.

Skipp to the next tactic

Collectively, we had problems but it was hard not to see almost all of them coming from or going back to the same part of the pitch. If midfield is the bridge to attack and an extra line of defence, Oliver Skipp and Boubakary Soumare together were not serving either. The crowd’s frustrations were homing in on Skipp too.

The signing of Skipp, and the amount, continues to cause frustration. At Championship level, he has to look like a quality footballer but added nothing in forty five minutes aside from assisting Sheffield Wednesday to score. The Mads Hermansen deal was already drawing eyebrows for the slightly cheaper valuation than we’d like but compared it to the figure we paid for Skipp and it looks worse. 

Where can Skipp go from here? This could have been a fresh start for him, but he left the game at half time as a pariah. Replaced by Harry Winks whose introduction saw an immediate shift in our shape, tempo and how good we looked. 

Having Cifuentes take decisive action at half time with Winks and the rest of his later substitutions also making an impact, while Plan Abdul is a key one, the new manager isn’t afraid to change other parts of the plan. A flexibility and pragmatism sorely lacking in recent seasons.

Winks, blacklisted for much of the first half of 2025, made an instant impact. He brought control, composure and a touch of class on the ball. There are rumours of clubs coming in with bids, but having already sold Wilfred Ndidi, Leicester cannot afford to let another experienced midfielder depart and his ability at this level is a must have. 

Where Leicester had been moving the ball slowly in the first half, there was energy again. El Khannouss began to find some space to move and thread passes, Ayew saw his time on the ball increase and James Justin made a lot of bombing runs into the box on the overlap. Pressure was building even before the Foxes got the early second half equaliser.

The unlikeliest goalscorers

It’s telling that life as a Leicester fan is expecting chaos and the unexpected, so maybe one or two fans would have believed you if you’d told them that the opening two goals of this new season would be scored by Jannik Vestegaard and Wout Faes. But most would have laughed.

Vestegaard back in the squad after, scoring and even taking the captain’s armband off Justin is a far cry from him being exiled last season for the curious incident of the dog at the training ground. He’d already had his redemption arc in the previous Championship season, but perhaps this is the sequel. 

He showed some nice control and slotted home calmly after the El Khannouss free kick evaded everybody else. Jubilant celebrations and confused faces all around.

A moment to acknowledge that set pieces have been a blight for Leicester for a while now, both attacking them and defending them. We insisted on shooting, to no impact, from most of the free kicks and our corners were still patchy but given both goals eventually came from them, perhaps further improvement is near. 

Wout Faes wasn’t even the obvious choice to come on as a substitute, let alone to find himself unopposed for a header to clinch the game. It depends which part of the ground you’re in, and how highly you rate your own hearing as to whether the crowd reaction to his substitution was ‘Wouuut’ or boos. He seemed to assume the latter based on his celebration that seemed to take aim at the crowd. Not the first time he’s visibly objected to the Kop after cupping his ear to us not so long ago.

It’s a tempestuous relationship at best between Faes and the fans. Every time we think it’s time to close the book and go our own way, he pops up with a moment like this. Late winner to give Cifuentes his first win. In what looks like a role he won’t play too often once Ben Nelson is fit. 

Leicester aren’t a team who have a guaranteed ten or twenty goal striker. Despite the gut busting, incredible run that Ayew carried out today that almost saw Patson Daka open his account, neither are expected to score big numbers. The Foxes will need goals coming from all over the pitch, so the unlikeliest of men getting the job done today is exactly what’s needed for the long season ahead. 

Today maybe wasn’t the showboating, impressive and clinical display we hoped for but we managed to avoid a banana skin and get the job done in the end. That in itself should increase some confidence and despite the jitters and boos, once we showed a bit of ourselves in the second half, the crowd were right back on side when it counted. 

There are still more unanswered questions though. Will we have to sell anybody else? Will we actually sign anybody? How do you prepare for a point deduction that will come at some point down the line? How do we line up defensively better to avoid some of the foolish moments seen here? 

Cifuentes continues to impress with how he conducts himself and what he says to the media. It feels more refreshingly honest than we’ve had in the last few managers. 

After this game he wasn’t shy of calling out the shortcomings but it was particularly interesting to hear him respond to a question where the interviewer said we deserved the win in the end by replying: “It’s about achieving it, not deserving it.” 

Championship life temporarily goes on hold for the Carabao Cup midweek. We’ll face Huddersfield before attention turns to Preston away in the league next weekend.